right ear. The Carsons hadn’t been happy about him coming along. I took out the mobile phone, held it in my left hand, made sure I knew which button to press when it vibrated. Then, a girl’s life at stake, I tried to concentrate on the game. Collingwood were playing a strange brand of football, going sideways, backwards, kicking to empty spaces, no central nervous system in control.
‘Sweet Jesus, convent girls, want it, don’t want it, they get it, they don’t know where to fucken put it,’ said the man next to me, a Collingwood supporter, lean-faced, mostly unshaven, with scar tissue under his right eye and a nose set askew. He caught my eye. ‘What I reckon,’ he said to me, blast of raw alcohol in the breath, ‘piss-poor coachin, that’s what I reckon.’
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘That’s what I reckon.’ Why did he assume my support of Collingwood? It dawned on me: there were only two colours on display around us: jumpers, beanies, scarves, huge Mad Hatter’s Teaparty hats, all in the sacred black and white, sin and purity, evil and innocence, the colours of certainty. This was Collingwood country.
‘Get this inya,’ said the skew-nosed man, warmed by our mutual contempt for the coach. He was offering a litre plastic bottle of an orange-brown liquid. I took a swig, felt tears start in my eyes, a prickling in my scalp follicles.
‘Bottla Bundy in there,’ said the man, not taking his eyes off the game. ‘Carn ya fucken sheilas!’
Carlton were all over Collingwood until half-time, kicking another goal and a behind just before the siren.
We all stood up.
‘Jesus,’ said my new friend, ‘just lie down and let the mongrels piss on em, that’d be better.’ He drank some more from the plastic bottle. ‘Speakin of piss, I kin taste it. Comin?’
‘I’m okay,’ I said.
He squeezed past me. ‘Watch the stuff, mate,’ he said, cocking his head at his army-surplus canvas rucksack.
The tiny telephone vibrated in my hand, a sensuous feeling.
I pressed the button.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Are you where you should be?’ The electronic voice.
‘Yes.’
‘Okay, this is what you do…’ You do what you’re told to do. Afterwards, the crowd didn’t hinder me as I walked up the stand, bent on leaving the stadium as quickly as possible. On the last ramp before the carpark, I took off the beanie I’d paid a startled fan fifty dollars for, dropped it in a bin.
I didn’t have any plans that included a Collingwood beanie.
7
‘You might’ve hung onto a few thousand,’ Orlovsky said, getting into the Mercedes with his briefcase, bringing in cold air, brushing rain off his scalp. ‘Honesty’s a much overrated virtue.’
‘Not when it’s the only one you’ve got,’ I said. ‘What’d you get?’
I had just finished my call to Noyce. We were on the St Kilda beachfront, near the lifesaving club, rain blowing off the bay. Only a few people out: two men in bright rain gear walking a fat and splay-footed black Labrador; an old woman, scarf tied under her chin above layers of sagging clothing; a small and threatening squad of inline skaters, indifferent to weather and fellow-humans and gravity.
‘Nothing. Call’s from a payphone at Royal Melbourne Hospital.’
I was dispirited, watching the skaters. They were coming up at speed behind the men with the dog, in formation, two tight ranks of three. Just when it seemed the front rank had to crash into the walkers, it parted, two left, one right, second rank following suit, going around the men and coalescing again like water flowing around a rock.
‘One thing worth knowing, though.’
‘Which is?’
‘Camel,’ he said.
‘What?’ I looked at him, startled. ‘What’s worth knowing?
‘Driver’s a secret Camel smoker.’
Orlovsky had opened the glovebox. Packed with packets of cigarettes, it glowed like a Walt Disney cave. With two fingers, he extracted a packet, put it in his inside jacket pocket.
‘Yes, honesty’s a much overrated virtue,’ he said. ‘There’s something else. My original opinion was this dickhead thinks he can hide his voice with some primitive piece of shit from a mail-order catalogue. Wrong. He’s no dickhead. That’s worth knowing.’
Orlovsky’s thumbs released the briefcase catches. The lid popped up. A laptop computer hidden in a battered leather briefcase.
‘I borrowed this,’ Orlovsky said. ‘Box of tricks.’ He switched on, did some key tapping.
My voice:
Mick tapped. Now a different electronic voice said the last words. He tapped again. Yet another eerie nonhuman voice. Then another one. And another.
‘This is smart stuff,’ Mick said. ‘The boy didn’t buy this machine anywhere. The Feds’ voice ID software can’t crack it.’
‘You know that?’
‘I know that.’
‘You’re hacking into the Feds’ system. What’s the penalty for that?’
‘I’m not hacking. This is legitimate access.’ He paused. ‘Someone else’s legitimate access.’
I sighed. ‘We’d better get back to the Carsons. Maybe these pricks will let the girl go tonight.’ I didn’t think that was likely. To put it mildly.
‘So they just did it to give the fans a treat?’ said Mick, closing his briefcase. ‘Wow. Maybe the two supporters’ clubs got together and arranged it. Kidnapping. Could become a regular thing for clubs.’
‘Get out,’ I said.
‘Sir.’
In Kooyong Road, in heavy traffic, he blinked his lights at me. I pulled over. He parked behind me and came to my window.
‘This Merc’s transmitting,’ he said. ‘Why would that be?’
‘How do you know?’
‘My box of tricks says so. Playing with it at the last lights.’
A tracking bug in Noyce’s car? I looked at Mick. We had the same thought at the same instant. I reached into the back seat and got the empty leather sports bag, gave it to him.
In the rearview mirror, I saw the interior light go on as he got into the Holden. It went off for a few seconds, went on and off as he got out again.
He gave me the bag back through the window. ‘Maybe they’re standard in bags like this,’ he said. ‘Sewn in by hand in Paris by an ancient Frog craftsman. Some cunt lifts your bag at the Hilton gym, you track him down, send your personal trainer over to kick the shit out of his personal trainer.’
All the way back to the Carson compound, cocooned in German steel and leather, wipers treating the drizzle with quiet contempt, I thought about Pat’s study the day before, the grim faces, Pat’s words:
